Month: November 2024

The increase in violent crime began on Trump’s watch and has largely subsided over the last two years, but you would never know it if you watch the news. Why? Because, as Don Henley once said, it’s interesting when people die. Crime stories dominate the local news and get plenty of attention on national broadcasts. Why wouldn’t people be afraid?

But Trump will do his best to persuade people that he alone has succeeded in getting crime under control. Will the national and local TV stations buy into this narrative, or will it be business as usual? I’m guessing the latter, but only time will tell.

As with inflation, the MSM bought into the GOP narrative on illegal immigrants in 2024. Day after day, we saw stories that focused on the hordes of asylum seekers crossing the border and their impacts on real Americans; the barbarities of Trump’s plans for raids and massive deportation camps received far less attention, since they were hypothetical at that stage. What can we expect once Trump is in office?

Three observations are pertinent here. First, the left-leaning MSM tend to focus on the problem of the day and miss the bigger picture, so I would expect them to run lots of poignant stories about the raids and the camps once they become a feature of everyday life. Second, the millions of Fox viewers will never see those stories and will be oblivious to them. Third, you can expect Trump to do his best to prevent the MSM from providing images of raids and the camps. I doubt he will have much success, but he is bound to try.

By any objective standard, the American economy was the envy of the world on the date of the election. The misery index was at a paltry six percent. The markets were riding high. Inflation had fallen almost to the Fed’s two percent target. Interest rates were coming down, and real wages were going up. And yet, Trump and the GOP prevailed on the basis that the economy was terrible. Why?

Part of it, of course, was lived experience with inflation prior to 2024. Part of it was the assumption on the part of poorly informed Americans that their pay increase was due purely to merit and rising prices to the failures of their government. But a big part of it was the result of the message one heard every night on the national news, and not just on Fox. The MSM constantly reminded us that inflation was out of control and did little to put that story into a larger narrative of worldwide supply chain problems, rising wages, and low unemployment. The public consequently responded by telling pollsters that their own finances were fine, but economic conditions as a whole were awful. Biden and Harris never found a way to deal with that attitude.

What will the MSM tell us about the Trump economy? Will they use today’s conditions as a baseline, or put on a parade of witnesses to tell us that things are so much better than they were in 2022, and Trump deserves the credit?

We’ll see.

When Trump plows through the guardrails, the issue will ultimately wind up at the Supreme Court. Thomas, Alito, and (probably) Gorsuch will support him, while the three liberals will oppose him. The outcome will be up to Barrett, Kavanaugh, and most importantly, the Chief Justice. Will Roberts stand up for the system, or will he, as I suggested in a previous post, twist himself into a pretzel in order to preserve the shell of judicial independence?

Roberts is a political animal, so I think the answer will depend largely on the polls. If Trump is popular, the Chief Justice will be strongly tempted to give him whatever he wants in order to avoid a constitutional conflict the Court might well lose. If not, the middle three will be more confrontational.

You can’t really discredit your opponents; they can only discredit themselves. With that in mind, what is the best way to deal with Trump?

He won the election by promising to bring back the economy of 2019. He is entitled to try. If he fails–and I have no doubt that he will, unless he gives up his tariff and deportation scheme–the blue team needs to point it out, day after day.

Peaceful demonstrations and litigation are the proper response when Trump crashes through the guardrails and threatens liberal democracy. For more day-to-day stuff, however, the polls and the markets will be the best remedy.

It’s Thanksgiving. What, exactly, do we have to be grateful for? That we don’t live in Gaza? That Helene and Milton ravaged our hometowns but spared us? That the Best Western offered us free showers when we didn’t have running water? That some of my favorite teams are doing well? That we still have two months until Trump takes over?

Well, there’s all of that. What I will try to focus on is the scale of the volunteer effort to help the NC mountain communities recover from a loss that was unimaginable just a few months ago. It has been genuinely inspiring.

You can probably find something, too. Happy Thanksgiving!

Deporting workers connected with the food industry will inevitably result in shortages and soaring food prices, particularly when combined with tariffs on products from Mexico. The public, which thinks it just voted for lower prices, will not be pleased. Could Trump avoid this problem simply by telling Stephen Miller very quietly to leave those workers alone and focus on urban areas?

I will be surprised if that doesn’t happen; after all, many of the capitalists in the food industry who will be crying for relief are his supporters. Don’t think that a more cynical approach to deportation will completely solve the problem, however. The fear of being imprisoned in a vast and squalid deportation camp will be enough to drive millions of migrants, including essential workers in agriculture and the meat processing industry, out of the country. Labor and food shortages will ensue; they just won’t be quite as dire as they might be with a more transparent and even-handed scheme.

The Israeli government has agreed to a cease-fire in Lebanon, but the war in Gaza continues to stumble on. Why the difference?

Several reasons. First of all, Hamas killed far more Israelis than Hezbollah, and in a more inflammatory way. Second, even the radical right understands that a complete and permanent victory over Hezbollah is not possible, given its ability to retreat out of the reach of the IDF, whereas Hamas is caged in Gaza. Third, the radical right wants to colonize Gaza but has no such aspirations for Lebanon. Finally, Bibi has no particular political vulnerability with regard to Lebanon, but he does with Gaza. He has every reason to postpone his day of reckoning for his failures with Hamas.

In other words, if you think this cease-fire means the imminent end of the war in Gaza, don’t hold your breath.

It appears that the filibuster is safe–at least, for now. That means any GOP attempt to eviscerate the safety net will have to be accomplished through reconciliation. The parameters of that process are largely defined by the Senate Parliamentarian.

Could you name her without doing a search on your computer? Probably not; I couldn’t, either. But she’s about to play a big role in our country’s history.

In 2020, the polls suggested a blue wave was imminent, but it did not happen. Biden won the popular vote comfortably, but the electoral vote was decided by a relative handful of votes in swing states. The Democrats won a tiny majority in the House–I believe they actually lost seats–and a second tiny majority in the Senate due to a favorable playing field.

In 2024, Trump won a small victory in the popular vote and a larger one in the Electoral College. With the advantage of a favorable playing field, the GOP won a majority by taking three Senate seats in bright red states and a fourth by a microscopic margin in Pennsylvania. The composition of the House basically remained exactly the same.

What conclusions should we draw from this? That while most votes in presidential elections are cast on the basis of ideology and identity, the actual outcome is determined by perceptions of the state of the country on the date of the election. In 2020, the wild card was Trump’s covid response; in 2024, it was inflation. The electorate, however, does not blame members of Congress for the perceived performance of the president. House races, in particular, are determined purely by ideology and identity.

What does this mean for 2028? That Trump and the GOP, having promised voters that a radical reactionary program will recreate the economy of 2019, had better deliver, or the pendulum will go right back to where it was in 2020.

He argued that building walls around his country would make it great again. At first, it worked, at least in a political sense; he won a smashing electoral victory by appealing to a coalition of social conservatives, business interests worried about the hard left opposition, and frustrated blue-collar workers in depressed areas. But his government was corrupt and shambolic, and the promised growth didn’t materialize. In the end, he left office with a very poor approval rating, and the left prevailed in a big way in the subsequent election.

Is it Trump or Boris Johnson? We’re about to find out.

In my posts about a slide into an authoritarian state, I have focused largely on the possibility that Trump will simply ignore court orders that he doesn’t like. This assumes that the judiciary–and in particular, the Supreme Court–will stand up to any attempt to crush liberal democracy. But is that judicial opposition inevitable?

Far from it. The Court’s limited power rests on its legitimacy in the court of public opinion, which has waned in recent years. The Court has also shown a willingness to overturn well-established precedents. What if John Roberts decides that he can’t prevail in a battle with Trump, so the best way to preserve at least the shell of judicial independence is to avoid a showdown by reinterpreting the law in radically new ways that facilitate an authoritarian state?

It could happen.

The Fugitive Slave Act galvanized public opinion in the North against slavery because it compelled individual citizens to become agents of the slave power. In a similar vein, it is clear that, even with the unlawful assistance of the military, Trump will have to rely on state and municipal governments to help identify illegal immigrants for deportation. How will the blue states react?

One of the themes of the next four years will revolve around Trump’s efforts to use federal funds, the judiciary, and possibly the military to force blue state governments to cooperate with the deportation scheme. They are already gearing up to resist. Call it the new Underground Railroad.

The previous Trump administration was corrupt, divisive, and shambolic. The last of these characteristics was due partly to the man on golf cart’s unusual management style and partly to the fact that he had no agenda other than to take a four-year victory lap. What can we expect this time around?

The new administration may even be more corrupt than the previous one, given that Trump knows now that he can get away with anything. His use of the pardon power and his control of the DOJ mean that his friends will enjoy the same kind of immunity. That 2.0 will be at least as divisive as its predecessor goes without saying. But while Trump’s chaotic management style hasn’t changed, he has a clear agenda this time–to reward his friends and punish his enemies. As a result, 2.0 will be somewhat less shambolic, but only in a bad way; you can expect him to be more ruthless and methodical in his efforts to suppress dissent.

RELY ON ECONOMIC SANCTIONS TO IMPOSE YOUR WILL, NOT WAR: Trump has the facially odd idea–probably because he was a businessman, not a soldier–that the true test of manhood comes through negotiations, not war. To him, every interaction has a clear winner and loser, and he always wins. His weapon of choice in this approach is economic sanctions.

But sanctions didn’t prevent Iran from moving closer to a bomb. Sanctions against Russia didn’t force Putin to abandon the war. Sanctions against Venezuela have done nothing to prevent Maduro from consolidating his power. Over sixty years of sanctions against Cuba have not resulted in a revolution against the regime. The bottom line is, they rarely succeed; more often, they make the helpless population miserable without creating the desired political outcome.